MOST SPOKEN LANGUAGES (GLOBALLY)

March 19, 2019

According to Ethnologue database, Chinese is the most widely spoken first language in the world while two Indian languages are in the top 10 global list.

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  • Ethnologue, a database whose website describes it as “the world’s most authoritative resource on world languages, trusted by academics and Fortune 500 companies alike”, provides details on all 7,111 known living languages. 

  • According to Ethnologue, there are a worldwide total of 1,311 million speakers of Chinese (macrolanguage) as first language, which includes individual languages such as Mandarin and Yue (Cantonese). 

  • Hindi and Bengali are the two Indian languages among the 10 most widely spoken in the world. 

  • Hindi with 341 million speakers is at number four — behind Spanish and English — and Bengali with 228 million is sixth, behind Arabic with all its variants. 

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